Are Conferences a Waste of Time?

by Heather Laine on August 20, 2014 5 comments

We live in a  digital age. I can sit at my computer all day and talk to people on the other side of the world, by email, chat or Skype. Online webinars make it possible to share training or ideas with larger groups of people without anyone leaving the comfort of their own office. Given that this is so, why do I need to get on a plane and fly 5,189 miles to San Diego, with all the jet lag, expense and inconvenience, in order to spend 4 days live with a group of people who are all as excited about LiveCode as I am?

jet plane

Of course you know that I’m not going to conclude that conferences are a waste of time. The clue is in that sentence “spend time with a group of people who are all as excited about LiveCode as I am”. But why not? How can we justify the huge investment of time, trouble and expense that live conferences represent? Besides the obvious opportunities for training and learning in formal sessions at these events, I think there are three areas where live conferences just cannot be replaced by digital events.

1) Personal interaction.

Accept no substitutes. You will always learn more in a face to face conversation with someone than you will over the phone/Skype. You can read their body language, pick up subtle nuances you would otherwise miss, not to mention that the conversation is going to flow far more smoothly that it does when you have to ask them to repeat every other sentence or reconnect three times when your Skype connection dies… As a moderator of several email lists I can tell you that an interaction via email can go pear shaped at the touch of an ill judged key. You just know that the group of people now engaged in a blazing flame war would get on like a house on fire if they were all sitting together in a bar, talking, instead of typing things at each other they will later regret.

 2) Networking.

There is a saying, “It’s not what you know but who”. You don’t know who you don’t know. You may find interesting people to interact with on forums, or during an online course, but there is just no better way to connect with the right people for you, your work, your educational needs or your business than attending a conference focussed on your area of interest. Unless you stay in your room and hide for the entire 4 days, you will meet interesting people who can help you at RunRevLive.14!

networkingRobert

3) Inspiration.

Life is not all about 1’s and 0’s. Yes, the mundane day to day tasks have to be done, plans need to be carried out, code must get written and so on and so forth. But where is your next big idea going to come from? A change of scene, a change of pace, and a new group of inspiring people to talk to might result in something you currently haven’t even begun to dream up. Technically, we could hold a conference in Dundee, in the rain, in a concrete/tin shed on an industrial estate somewhere. I suspect that a) not many people would come and b) it would not have the same inspiring atmosphere and potential as a conference held in beautiful surroundings with good weather, good food and plenty to see and do.

uglytinshed

Our next conference venue?

Personally, I’m hugely looking forward to seeing you all again, catching up on the gossip, meeting old friends and making new ones, and adding San Diego 2014 to my bag of happy memories. As far as whether it is worth it to attend goes, I’ll let an attendee from last year sum it up. He told me:

“That one to one meeting I just had with your developer was worth the entire cost of the conference to me! Thank you so much.”

 Have you been to one of our conferences? Or another conference? How did you find the experience, was it worth it to you?

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Heather LaineAre Conferences a Waste of Time?

HTML5: Next Steps

by Kevin Miller on August 8, 2014 9 comments

reprinted from revUp

Well, what an exciting ride that was! Thank you so much to everyone that helped make HTML5 deployment for LiveCode a reality. Together we made the total and we’re setting the wheels in motion.

 

Community Powered

This truly was a community driven project. From the first survey indicating the depth of feeling for HTML5 deployment, to the last pledge that put us over the line, its been you the users, powering the campaign all the way. It was a fascinating study in crowdfunding, and you might want to check out this blog post for a deeper analysis of what goes into a successful crowdfunded project. I feel privileged to work with such a dedicated, creative and enthusiastic community. Thank you all. You have entrusted us with this project, and we will work hard to bring you what you’ve asked for: an HTML5 capable version of LiveCode we can all be proud of.

Team Driven

I’ve thanked the community for your contribution. Thanks are also due to our small but dedicated marketing team that ran the campaign, engineered the page, raised awareness, answered your questions, and processed all the pledges. The last day especially was intense in terms of managing the last minute rush of queries and pledges. The upside of running the campaign on our own site instead of on Kickstarter was the additional flexiblity this allowed us, but this did mean we had to meet all the technical challenges ourselves. A very big Well Done to Steven, Heather and especially Arnaud for creating the highly complex webpage, making all the last minute changes demanded of him and keeping it up and running successfully through some very challenging traffic spikes.

Ramping it up

What’s next? We have some major plans to put into motion. Making the campaign total means we will secure the matchfunding, so we are now ploughing through the necessary paperwork and red tape for that. The HTML5 Dev Team needs put into place, trained and briefed. We’re working hard to ramp it all up. It’s a long runway, with our projected delivery date July/August next year, but thanks to you we are getting started! We’ll bring you more information in the coming weeks.

Why HTML5?

I’ve discussed the importance of this additional deployment platform a lot over the last few weeks. Being able to run your app straight in the browser, using the same natural language and drag/drop interface to create it widens the scope for LiveCode projects to a whole new audience. Schoolchildren gain greater accessibility, phone apps can be deployed without going through the app stores and the long tail of niche platforms that LiveCode doesn’t currently address can be supported via the browser. No plugin and no app to install removes barriers to adoption. Anywhere you can run an HTML5 capable browser, you will be able to run your app.

I’m really looking forward to the huge potential opened up by LiveCode HTML5!

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Kevin MillerHTML5: Next Steps

Thank You. HTML5 is coming to LiveCode

by LiveCode Team on July 31, 2014 No comments

WOW. We have done it. We are over 100% funded. HTML5 Web Deployment will be coming to LiveCode.

Your support over the last 30 days has been incredible and we can’t thank you enough for sharing our passion in delivering a better LiveCode.

Thank you to everyone who shared, commented, shouted and pledged on this campaign. Your support means a better LiveCode for you and for everyone.

THANK YOU

The LiveCode Team

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LiveCode TeamThank You. HTML5 is coming to LiveCode

This is One Powerful Crowd

by Steven Crighton on July 27, 2014 20 comments

Over the last 13 months since being with LiveCode the strength and loyalty of this community has never failed to amaze me. We are a bigger & stronger community than we have ever been and that is very powerful. It means that all of us together can control the future of our product.

In 2013 we ran our first Crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter and this is where we stood up and showed the world that the LiveCode community is here to make a difference. We are here to make a better coding experience and we are not stopping until we achieve that.

A few months ago Kevin Miller LiveCode CEO (my boss) approached me about running a crowd funding campaign to bring HTML5 Web Output into LiveCode. My first thought was not worry or fear, it was excitement. I was so impressed that we were making a decision to go big, we were not sitting back on our 2013 success, we were saying, well we ain’t done yet, so let’s make a better LiveCode and let’s do it now. My second thought came in the form of about a million questions and I want to try and take you through that journey now.

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Steven CrightonThis is One Powerful Crowd

We need your help: 6.7 and 7.0 Final DP’s released

by Ben Beaumont on July 22, 2014 14 comments

After months of hard work both from the LiveCode team and the community in testing we’re nearing the release candidate cycle for both 6.7 and 7.0. Today we release the final DP or “developer preview” of 6.7 and 7.0 containing more than 180 fixes.

LiveCode 6.7 contains many new features and refinements to the high DPI support:

  • Cocoa – Latest Mac OS API’s making your apps a 1st class citizen on that platform
  • coreText – Faster rendering of text on Mac OS
  • webKit browser – Improved desktop web browser with two way Javascript communication
  • Extended in-app purchasing – Support for Samsung and Kindle stores
  • AVFoundation – New multimedia playback on Mac enabling appStore submission
  • Effective points of graphics – A great community contribution from Mark Wieder
  • Nine-way stretch for images – Making fluid layout skinned applications even easier
  • 126 bug fixes

LiveCode 7.0 contains a completely restructured engine and will be the foundation of everything we do in 2014/2015

  • Transparent Unicode support – Create apps in any language.
  • New chunk expressions – Paragraph, sentence, trueword, codeunit, codepoint 
  • Engine refactor – New modern internals making development easier and external contributions simpler
  • Linux GDK port – This is similar to the Cocoa port for Mac. Linux users will now enjoy better platform features
  • 181 bug fixes

Developer previews / release candidates?

A developer preview (or “DP”) is a build of LiveCode that contains new features that we would like to offer to the community for testing and feedback.

A release candidate (or “RC”) is a build of LiveCode that contains new features that we propose are ready for release. During the release cycle the team focuses on testing, refinement and bug fixes. Bugs found are fixed and a new release candidate is built. Multiple RC’s are released until the build is deemed stable.

A stable release (or “GM”, short for “Golden Master”) is a build of LiveCode that is feature complete and at the time of release bug free. 

How can you help?

We invite you to download and test your projects in both of these releases. 

Testing is easy. Simply open your projects in LiveCode 6.7 and 7.0 and run through your normal testing procedure. You may have written automated tests for your product or work methodically through your app, testing each of its features. Either way, doing this will reveal any changes to the behaviour of LiveCode. Our aim when redeveloping both 6.7 and 7.0 was to make stacks run EXACTLY as they did in previous versions of LiveCode. For the most part, we have achieved this so 99% of stacks should run unchanged. If you notice any changes in behaviour or experience any instability please file a bug report at quality.runrev.com

When will you go RC?

These are the last developer preview builds. The next builds will be release candidates which we hope to make available at the end of next week. Much will depend on feedback from you and whether we can resolve the issues reported over the weekend and through next week. We are still working on a multi-core rendering optimisation that will enable LiveCode to use all available CPU cores when rendering your stacks. It looks like it will offer some good performance improvements and will be released in the first RC builds. 

Why not merge 6.7 and 7 into 1 release?

Some of you have asked why we don’t put 6.7 and 7.0 together into a single release, especially considering they are both coming out at the same time. Our primary motivation is you, our users. Many rely on our technology in your businesses and 6.7 provides a much smaller jump in changes upon which to deliver your products. The 7.0 developments have changed the way your stacks read in and write out out to disk as well as altering the performance profile of LiveCode. Certain operations in LiveCode are now slower while others are much faster. Text manipulation is at the heart of the LiveCode engine which now stores and processes strings as Unicode which is much more complex than the previous native format. Almost every command and function in LiveCode interacts with text meaning that many now perform at different speeds than they did before. Providing a 6.7 release enables those of you who need to tweak your apps for 7.0 the time to do so. 

Where can I get these releases?

You can download installers at downloads.livecode.com or choose “check for updates” from the help menu in LiveCode.

Report it at quality.runrev.com. The better your report the more quickly our test team can reproduce and the easier it is for our developers to identify the problem in the source and fix it. A great bug report would contain:

1) A simple sample stack with a script that triggers the issue. The simpler, the better.
2) A step by step guide to causing the issue. E.g:
a) Open the attached sample stack
b) Click on the “start” button
c) RESULT: Causes LiveCode to misbehave is x,y and z ways
d) EXPECTED RESULT: LiveCode previously behaved like a,b and c

Where can I find out about the specifics in these releases?

We provide release notes with every build of LiveCode. These provide details of every feature, change and bug fix made in the release. You can find links to the release notes at downloads.livecode.com and from the help menu in LiveCode.

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Ben BeaumontWe need your help: 6.7 and 7.0 Final DP’s released

New Pledge Added, Newsletter Available

by Heather Laine on July 21, 2014 6 comments

In our last newsletter we asked you to tell us if you wanted an additional combined pledge to get both the current Indy platforms and the HTML5 deployment when it becomes available. We were immediately flooded with requests for this pledge so we have added it for you. Pledge for the Combined Indy All Platform license to get 1 year of immediate Commercial access on all current supported platforms, and 1 year of HTML5 deployment when we have completed it. You can get it here, now. Thank you so much for all the feedback! 

We have received a lot of questions about the campaign, so we pulled them all together into a newsletter article, which you can read here if you are interested. There is also a great article from some of our users describing what they expect to use HTML5 deployment for. I hope you enjoy reading it and find it inspirational. Let’s keep those pledges coming in!

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Heather LaineNew Pledge Added, Newsletter Available